LTRO-Ho-Ho. Santa and His Elves Assess Mario’s Year

As Commerzbank’s currencies analysts pointed out in a research note this week: “Let’s be blunt. It is Christmas.” Strategists’ views don’t always come good, but that is beyond doubt.

And it means it’s time for usually staid markets analysts to get, er, creative.

Step forward Laurence Mutkin of Morgan Stanley. In a note to clients Friday, he lays out a festive scene, with Santa asking his elves what to get for Mario (Draghi, obviously), who is “a bit old to believe in Father Christmas” but who, the elves point out, “believes in the euro” and “has been good all year.”

The elves, it turns out, are rather clued up on financial matters. They must read The Wall Street Journal. “The three-year LTROs really helped the banks; he cut policy rates to new all-time lows to help the economy; and with the OMT he, like, crushed the tail risk on peripherals,” they tell Santa. “I mean, have you seen how sovereign spreads have come in this year?”

You get the idea.

So what does Mario want? Not train sets and construction toys, but four building blocks. “A fiscal union, a financial union, an economic union and a political union.”

Sadly, it seems that is beyond the big man. (Santa, that is.)

“Eh? Just that? No mention of the moon on a stick, perhaps? Well, you can tell Mario and all his friends in the euro zone from me, that if they want all that, they’re going to have to make it themselves,” he says angrily.

Come on Santa, you can do it. You have 10 days left until Christmas — surely enough time for just one more summit?